Getting the most out of your Office 365 Azure Active Directory

If you already have an Azure subscription for managing your Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) you are ready to sign-up for MatterMojo and use your Office 365 account to sign-in. If not please read on to find out how to prepare your Office 365 account for single sign-on with MatterMojo…

What is Azure AD?

Azure AD is a cloud-based service for managing user access to applications. It is part of the Microsoft Azure cloud platform and underpins a wide range of Microsoft online products, including Office 365.

When you sign up to Office 365 you are asked to create a domain ending in ‘onmicrosoft.com’ e.g. mylawfirm.onmicrosoft.com. Behind the scenes Microsoft is creating an Azure AD for this domain to manage security and access for your instance of Office 365. Every time you sign in to Office 365 you are actually signing into Azure AD which validates your identity and passes this information to Office 365.

Azure AD can also be used to manage access to a wide range of non-Microsoft applications. This is great news for users because they only need to remember one set of credentials and it is great news for administrators because they can control access to thousands of applications from a central place.
This great capability is only available from within the Microsoft Azure portal. Fortunately registration is simple for Office 365 users and only takes a couple of minutes...

Enabling full Azure AD functionality for your Office 365 Instance

1. Log in to Office 365 as an administrator and navigate to the Admin Center (you will need to ask your Office 365 administrator to follow these steps if you are not an administrator yourself).

2. Scroll down to the bottom of the left-hand menu and click on ‘Admin \ Azure AD’

3. This launches a special Microsoft Azure sign-up page where you will need to enter a few details – no credit card is required but you do have to verify you are not a robot by entering a code sent to your mobile phone.

4. Once you have verified your identity you will be taken to the Azure subscriptions page where you will see your new subscription in a pending state.

Once your subscription is ready, click on the 'Portal’ link on the right hand-side to go to a cut-down version of the Azure portal where you can take full advantage of your Azure AD. To access the Azure portal again later the link is https://manage.windowsazure.com.

Now you have enabled Azure AD for your Office 365 account you can use it to sign-up and manage access to MatterMojo and thousands more applications. Head over to the Azure AD Market Place to see this ever growing list of cloud applications that support single sign-on using Azure AD.

That’s it for the sign-up steps! If you face any issues with the steps above or would like more information please contact us at support@mattermojo.com.